“You know, I’ve been thinking,” James said. “She might be angling to get your support for a petition to the governor to delay the execution next week.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“The timing is suspicious.”
Kate nodded resignedly. “Want my pie? I’m not hungry.”
James shook his head but took it anyway. He picked up his fork and took a bite. “Don’t let her pressure you, okay? She might try to suck you into the whole anti-death-penalty fracas. If she brings it up, just remember, you don’t have to sit there and take it. You can walk away with a clean conscience. Don’t let her guilt-trip you.”
“I won’t.”
“That’s my baby.” His arduous morning was etched into his face. “Want me to go with you?” he offered.
“Nah. Then she’d really clam up.”
“You sure?”
“She’s a little high-strung. I’d better go by myself.” Kate reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “How’s your headache? Are you okay?”
“If by ‘okay’ you mean beaten to a pulp by my so-called profession, then sure.”
She rested her hand on his forehead. His skin was clammy and cool, belying the feverish spots on his cheeks. “Deep breaths. In and out.”
He laughed. “Shut up.”
“Oh come on. Where’s the confident psychiatrist I used to know?”
He waved his hand unenthusiastically. “Yo. Right here.”
“Yeah, I haven’t seen him around lately.”
“He’s underneath all this collaborative intensive short-term dynamic therapy.”
They gazed at one another.
“Seriously. Are you okay?”
He cracked a defiant smile. “Oh, I have fleeting moments of lucidity.”
“Agatha?”
“Feels like I’m living inside that movie, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She’s definitely plotting my destruction. Maybe I should just inject myself with Haldol and call it a day.”
“Want me to beat her up for you?”
“Nah.” He sipped his iced tea. “I think that’s illegal.”
She touched his arm.
“What gets me is she’s really smart and observant,” he said. “It’s such a tragedy. She could’ve been a valuable member of society, if it weren’t for her borderline personality disorder… I hate to admit it, but most of these people who come to us for help, Kate… they’re lifers. You release them and hope for the best, but you know they’ll be back.”
“End of April,” she promised. “Cancun. Or the Caymans.”
His eyes lit up. “Yeah?”
“Unless you’d rather go to Disneyland?”
“No, I’m good.” He beamed and dug into his apple pie.
At that moment, Jerry Meinhard walked over to their table and said, “Hello, ladies and germs. What’s up?”
Kate groaned internally. Jerry was the psychiatry department clown, and certainly not a doctor she would have trusted with her mental health.
“Jerry,” James said drearily.
“Nothing much,” Kate muttered.
“I got a new one for you. Psychotics build sandcastles, and their shrinks collect the mortgage.” Jerry looked at them expectantly. “Huh? Get it?” He laughed out loud. “I thought it was funny.”
Kate gave him a dour look.
“Ouch, J-Man. Your girlfriend doesn’t like me.”
“Leave us alone, Jerry. We’re having an adult conversation here.”
“Ooh, so sensitive. Okay, I’ll abscond to the kiddie table,” he said and left.
“Hey,” James whispered. “Maybe he put those peanuts in your office?”
“Sheesh,” Kate said. “Of course. Jerry the Joker.”
“Want me to beat him up for you?”
“Nah. I have a feeling it would only encourage him.”
“True. Best to ignore the putz.”
She leaned forward and cocked an eyebrow. “I’ll get him back.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But he’ll never see it coming.”
There was that beautiful crooked-ass grin of his. “I like the way you think, Dr. Wolfe.”
16
AFTER HER SHIFT WAS over, Kate took the 95 north out of Boston and drove past mini-malls, industrial parks, forests, and lakes on a steady trajectory toward Blunt River, New Hampshire. It was mid-afternoon and the traffic wasn’t bad for a Friday.
Sixteen years ago, Penny Blackwood had sealed her uncle’s fate inside a Manchester courtroom after his defense team claimed he was with her on that fateful night. But Penny contradicted his sworn statement, testifying that her uncle had left the house for six hours that evening, returning in a disheveled state. The jury believed her, not him. The state’s evidence alone had probably been strong enough to convict Blackwood, but Penny had made certain that the monster was put away. Kate recalled her vaguely, with pity—a shy dishwater blond drifting through the high-school hallways like a ghost, never calling attention to herself. An invisible kid, like so many of Kate’s troubled patients.
Although she wasn’t allowed inside the courtroom while Penny was testifying, Kate had seen plenty of video footage of the state’s star witness leaving the courthouse on the six o’clock news, deluged by reporters and camera crews clamoring up the steps and shouting questions at her. She would drape a sweater over her head in order to hide her face. On TV, Henry Blackwood always looked the same. He frowned a lot. He had a nasty shadow across his face. Kate couldn’t think of him now without those grainy media images playing inside her head, as if he didn’t exist except in some staticky, cathode-ray memory.
She’d been driving for over an hour now through patches of snow and patches of sunshine, and she’d fallen into a kind of waking slumber. She turned off the radio and drove in silence along the eastern branch of the river. She was in southwestern New Hampshire with its hazy mountains and wintery landscape—a palette of gold, platinum, and silver. Some of the houses were stately, whereas others had junk stacked in the yards.
The town of Blunt River had once been a manufacturing hub for shoes, and its Ivy League university was nearly as old as Yale. The town’s greatest shame was its crumbling lunatic asylum, closed in 1996, now just a cluster of deteriorating edifices nestled in conservancy lands not far away from the modern, university-affiliated Blunt River Hospital with its updated, compassionate psych ward.
Kate’s mother had been committed to the old asylum when Kate was ten years old and Savannah was six, both of them too young to appreciate what was going on. At the beginning of her illness, Julia Wolfe heard voices. She saw things no one else did—faces in the window, strange lights coiling through the air. She was convinced somebody was following her all over town. At the asylum, Julia was treated for bipolar disorder and a major depressive episode. Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, was a brain chemistry disorder, a chronic illness with mood swings that ranged from depression to mania. In some cases, bipolar disorder was accompanied by visual or auditory hallucinations. These psychotic symptoms were more commonly linked to schizophrenia, however, and as a result, patients with severe mood swings who also hallucinated were often incorrectly diagnosed. The doctors insisted that Julia’s bipolar disorder had manifested itself in hallucinations, but her delusions were so severe, Kate often wondered if her mother had been misdiagnosed. Bipolar schizoaffective disorder might’ve been more accurate.
The doctors released her six months later. A few weeks after that, she filled her pockets with rocks and drowned herself in the river like Virginia Woolf, her favorite writer.
Kate took the exit ramp off the interstate and followed the familiar, arcing road toward Blunt River. She hadn’t been home in three years—not that her father ever complained. She rarely heard from him, except for the obligatory Christmas card or birthday gift—always a book. She made an attempt to call him a couple of times a year and usually got his machine. You have reached Dr. Wolfe. Leave a message after th
e tone. Eventually, she’d stopped leaving messages, because there was so little to say.
Now a wave of dread washed over her, along with a splash of nostalgia. Her curiosity was piqued. Nothing had changed— Blunt River was the same quaint New England town it had always been, charming and slow-paced, with a prestigious university nestled in its bosom. Her hometown. She passed by cottages and Gothics and Victorians where some of her childhood friends used to live, people she’d lost contact with years ago: she used to play doctor with Ashley Walsh’s brother in that green house; in that split-level she’d once barfed in Dara Bogdanova’s bathtub; in that Tudor-style home, she’d been the most unpopular sleepover guest ever when she couldn’t stop trashing Alanis Morissette.
She slowed down for the blinking yellow light and took a left onto Three Hills Road. She felt a slight apprehension as she dipped and rolled over the three hills—up and down, up and down, like riding a galloping dragon.
Almost home.
Well, not exactly. She hadn’t told her father about today’s little excursion and didn’t plan on dropping by unexpectedly. Instead, she would cut through her old neighborhood on her way to Wilamette. Hi Dad, bye Dad. Sorry, Dad.
The GPS system spouted directions, and Kate mindlessly obeyed, turning left, driving one-point-five miles, taking a right, et cetera. The town the Wards lived in, Wilamette, was an ugly carbuncle of a place on the other side of the river. She crossed the rib of steel spanning the cold blue river and passed a sign that said WELCOME TO WILAMETTE—LUMBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Lies, all lies.
Here the landscape changed dramatically. The roads were in terrible shape. Half the shops on Main Street were boarded up and the hardware store had a 60% OFF sign in the window. Daffy’s was The Four-Leaf Clover now, and Barney’s Bar & Grill was a fast-food joint. The movie theater had been permanently shuttered. After a mile or so, Wilamette’s depressing commercial drag head-butted into a demoralized dead-end, and Kate had to turn left at the railroad tracks in order to keep on going.
What had once been a booming logging town was now struggling to rebrand itself into a woodsy, idyllic tourist destination. Good luck with that. Wilamette boasted bike paths and hiking trails, but the infrastructure was pretty torn up, the roads pitted with potholes. There were too many disintegrating trailer parks and bungalows painted “fun” colors that’d been passed from one generation to another. A few candy stores and souvenir shops had sprouted up here and there, but the poverty was spreading. The people were struggling, the mayor was corrupt, and it had been like this forever.
She took a right at the intersection and meandered for miles into the hills, past illicit farmsteads—puppy mills, mink farms, pot farms. The good people of Wilamette enjoyed collecting car parts and rusty wheelbarrows. Some of her friends from Wilamette used to laugh at their parents’ oddball behavior, and she wondered if those same bright, ironic, promising Gen-Yers were still trapped here. Or had they escaped “Whack-o-mette” for more sophisticated destinations? Hopefully some were on a mission to drag their hometown kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.
It was late in the afternoon by the time she’d reached Nelly Ward’s drab-looking mid-century modern. The navy blue Toyota Camry was parked in the driveway. The residence was at least sixty years old and poorly constructed, as if it were being pulled apart by an angry seamstress—cracks in the siding betrayed the subsiding foundations.
Kate parked on the street and got out. Rows of icicles hung like tinsel from the roof. She trudged up the walkway with a sense of purpose and rang the doorbell.
When Nelly answered she gasped, “What’re you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
“You could’ve warned me you were coming.”
“I tried to. Did you get my messages?”
After a beat, Nelly relented.
The instant Kate stepped inside the house, she was hit with a blizzard of smells: mildew, garbage, cigarettes. She expected to see crosses and other Christian symbols hanging on the walls, but instead there was a mixed bag of good-luck charms: Native American totems, New Age amulets, four-leaf clovers, and primitive talismans. There were a couple of medieval-looking crucifixes, but they were far outnumbered by the New Age objects.
Nelly followed her gaze, then held out her scrawny arms for inspection, dozens of silver-and-turquoise bracelets jangling from her wrists. “The Aztecs and Mayans used to believe that turquoise and silver kept the evil spirits away. So I figured, what the heck? The more the merrier. Not that it works,” she muttered. “I have the worst damn luck.”
Kate wondered what it was like for Maddie, growing up in this cramped house where the walls seemed to close in on you. Somebody had struggled to make the place cheery and bright, but the venetian blinds were snapped shut, allowing no sunlight in. Kate spotted a framed photograph on the mantelpiece—the happy couple on their wedding day. Nelly’s husband was a big guy in a tux, with broad shoulders and collar-length dark hair. The bride beamed with joy, but the groom wore a slight scowl that gave the picture an aura of unhappier things to come.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Anywhere,” Nelly said with a shrug.
Kate sat on the edge of a large plaid sofa that smelled faintly of dog. She decided to come out with it. “You’re Penny Blackwood, aren’t you? Henry’s niece?”
“I am,” Nelly admitted drily. “I changed my name for obvious reasons.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that the other day?”
“I don’t know.” There were dark circles under her eyes. It was hard to believe they were only two years apart—Nelly seemed so much older. She wore a pink turtleneck sweater, slender brown slacks, and a pair of terrycloth slippers, the open-heeled kind you could shuffle around in like two comfy shoeboxes.
“I don’t get it,” Kate said. “Why drive your daughter all the way down to Boston when there’s an excellent psych ward right across the river? Why go so far out of your way?”
Nelly plopped down in a vinyl armchair. “I don’t know.”
“Look,” Kate said, softening a little, “there are plenty of excellent female psychiatrists in Blunt River. Why pick me?”
“Well, for one thing, I read about you in the Globe. That award. And I’ve had it up to here with these so-called experts,” Nelly snarled. “They don’t know shit, in my opinion.”
“Dr. Quillin and the others? Maddie mentioned them to me.”
“Dr. Quillin, Dr. Madison, Dr. Hoang. Overpaid hacks, the lot of them. You get conflicting advice all the time. She’s bipolar—no, she’s schizophrenic. And the drugs they prescribe only seem to make things worse. And nobody can give me a straight answer. In the meantime, she keeps getting worse.”
“So you chose me?” Kate asked, trying to keep her voice level. “Out of all the doctors at Tillmann-Stafford? Because you got frustrated with the ones in Blunt River and you read about me in the Globe?”
“What do you want me to say?” Nelly stood up anxiously.
“The truth would be nice.”
“The truth?” Nelly was shaking slightly, like a dog backing up on its hind legs. “My uncle didn’t kill your sister,” she blurted out, as if she’d been dying to say it all along. “How’s that for the truth?”
Kate’s stomach dropped.
“And now he’s going to die for something he didn’t do.”
“But it was your testimony that convicted him,” Kate said through clenched teeth.
“Doesn’t matter. I know for a fact he didn’t do it.”
“Really? That’s odd, because my sister was buried in his backyard. How do you explain that? And why did you testify against him?”
“All I know is an innocent man is going to die,” Nelly said stubbornly.
Kate scowled. It made sense to her now. That’s why you brought Maddie to see me. This is all about your guilty feelings. You ratted your uncle out at the trial, and now that he’s about to be executed, you’ve decided to change your story, and y
ou thought you could drag me into it. Well, tough luck.
Kate stood up. “There are plenty of other qualified psychiatrists in the Boston area. In the meantime, I’ll ask my colleague, Ira Lippencott, to take over Maddie’s treatment for now. He’s a renowned child psychiatrist, one of the best—”
“No!” Nelly stood trembling in front of Kate, a skinny woman with saucer-sized eyes. “Please… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I remember you from school. Do you remember me?”
Kate nodded. “Vaguely,” she admitted.
“You and your sister used to walk past my uncle’s house on your way to school every day. I’d wave at you sometimes from the upstairs windows—do you remember me now? You’re both so vivid in my mind, the pretty redhead and her little blond shadow.”
It shocked Kate to realize that Penny had been aware of them, because she couldn’t remember anyone waving at them from Blackwood’s house. More importantly, she didn’t want to discuss her dead sister with this woman, because even though Nelly Ward was innocent, she’d been tainted with her uncle’s monstrousness.
On some level, Kate wanted to punish her. “How come you haven’t been to the hospital yet? Maddie needs you more than ever.”
“I don’t know.” Nelly cupped her hands over her face.
“What’s going on? Are there problems at home? Is it your husband?”
“No. Jesus.”
“Okay, look. I can recommend some excellent female psychiatrists…”
“No!” Nelly shouted, eyes tearing up.
“You want me to treat her? Why?”
Nelly shook her head. “Look, I’ve been keeping track of you over the years… I’m no stalker, it’s just that I felt so bad about your sister… such a horrible thing… and my uncle didn’t do it, you see. I know for a fact he’s innocent. And so I figured… well, maybe I wasn’t thinking? Maybe I’m just stupid?” she said with unexpected ferocity.
Now Kate understood where the voice in Maddie’s head was coming from. “Listen,” she said softly. “You aren’t stupid. You’re just as confused as the rest of us.”
“Confused? Absolutely. Unlucky? Definitely. We don’t all have perfect lives,” Nelly said bitterly.
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